Soap Box

Coming home isn't always fun; there seems to be a ceaseless supply of strangers that my parents have me meet. The number of people they have met in their lives is truly astounding. But one thing that I do appreciate about going home is the opportunity to talk to my dad about things that I'd never get to talk to about anyone else. Like Chinese missionaries. He knows a lot about them. Of white men who went into China in the nineteenth and twentieth century, who dressed like the locals, who were as culturally sensitive as a white men were capable of at that time and age, who refused to go home in the face of war and uprisings, and died in China. Of Chinese men, who had the opportunity to study abroad, experience religious freedom, and still returned to their homeland so they could preach Jesus. Of martyrs and labor camps and all these things that seem so surreal. Yet they happened in the very near past and continue today.

I was a soc major. Cultural hegemony was my bread and butter. I know how missionaries ravaged cultures. For every great there were many, many not. Yet these folks-- it's because of their contributions to the Chinese church and their zealousness that my great grandfather and my grandparents ever came in contact with the church. Even if you think these men were crazy Christians, their stories are fascinating. And every time I hear my father tell these stories, stories that no one else in my life talks about, their passion arouses something in me out of dormancy (the characters' passion- not the story telling- my father says "and he died in prison camp" with the same steady tone he explains global oil prices). I remember that I'm Chinese. Christian. Casual writer. And these bits makes me want to tell stories.